


Insomnia

by tooth_and_claw



Category: Batman Beyond
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooth_and_claw/pseuds/tooth_and_claw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short meditation by Bruce on Terry, his Robins, and the events after Return of the Joker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karanguni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/gifts).



Though a long-term companion, Bruce's insomnia tormented him particularly these past few weeks. He meandered the halls of Wayne manor, tapping his cane along the floor just to hear it echo. Clack from the cane, clop from his shoes, click from Ace's nails as he followed behind (as long as his master did not rest, he did not rest). Always, though, the wanders ended in the same place. It was not shocking. He did not need to dwell on the monotony of it. It simply was. Like the bat, he needed to be in his cave during the daylight hours-- and he felt more like the bat than he had in a very long time. Though it had been vicarious, seeing the Joker's face, his eyes so close-- well, memories were what haunted them all, weren't they.

Today, he monitored Terry. Terry did not know this, of course. What hidden information could a man possibly glean from a source who knew they were watched? Not that he thought Terry had any deep secrets to hide, anything Bruce didn't already know, but it was for the best. Terry was not relaxed around Bruce, had been even more taciturn after the events with Tim Drake. Bruce absolutely needed to know Terry from the inside out. The kid had proved himself time and time again, but this work took such a psychic toll that it didn't matter how many years you did it successfully, because all it took was one bad mission, one day, and the fault lines shifting in your psyche would bring down the all the architecture of a hero you had built up. If you knew the lay of the land, though, could anticipate mental earthquakes long before they broke a person open . . . well. Adjustments could be made. So Bruce watched Terry through means the boy couldn't know about, hunting for the cracks.

It did not escape Bruce's attention that Terry's grades were slipping as of late. Something would need to be done about that. Terry complained about it daily to Max and Dana, when he wasn't ignoring class to send insipid comments about pop culture to the one and sexual overtures to the other. Terry was particularly tired, Bruce knew, because he messed up that order once already. Max was displeased. He was facing insomnia then as well. Next time he came home-- came back to the Batcave, not home, Bruce corrected himself-- after a Thursday night/Friday morning patrol, Bruce would be sure Terry had a drink or a snack, and a precise dose of a sleeping agent that would kick in only after Terry had returned safely to his bed and keep him sleeping without dreams until the next patrol. They could not afford grogginess.

Terry used his devices to look up other things, too. Occasionally he used them for schoolwork, which entertained Bruce and made him angry in equal measure. The things that they taught highschoolers these days. The things they *didn't*, rather. There was no western canon left to study, and history was a smear of glossy topics polished for the short attention spans of children used to their problems with past events being solved by time traveling morons in tights.

Not that Bruce knew any of those.

His protege checked a recipe, he updated his online profile, he sent messages to friends. Good boy, keeping up appearances.

He read up on the old Robins.

Bruce was torn on this development, and development it was. Terry researched Bruce himself, quite thoroughly, but when Barbara Gordon was-- when she had wanted to help you, that is, when she had been Batgirl, once upon a very long time ago-- digital records of those things you did not want known were non-existent. They say nothing ever left the internet once it was on there. They were stupid, and didn't have the right hacker working for them. So Terry had researched him and found what a diligent reporter might find, and no more, and was satisfied with that. He had never much bothered with Batman's cast of characters. Only the villains, and only when they might have relevance to current events.

He leaned back, his body creaking louder than the chair, and rubbed the knot of bone between his eyes. His flesh felt loose over the ridge, detaching from the muscle beneath like it was making an escape. Long ago he never would have bothered to compare that sensation to what he was feeling now, wouldn't have bothered to think about how he was feeling at all. But that was then, and he had gained something* with age at least, *something* beyond cantankerousness. He was aware enough to know he would never be called emotionally gifted, but he was not so stunted that this feeling, this rotten ulcer in his gut (not the real one, the other, the worse) went unnoticed. Tim Drake. What was he going to do with the memory of Tim Drake?

What was Terry going to do with it?

Perhaps he saw a possible future in Drake, a probability higher than zero that he, too, would end up in a comfortable middle class life, carrying no more burden on his shoulders than a shattered psyche healed into a shapeless mass of mediocrity. He would fear that, as all rebellious teenage boys do. It sounded harsh. It wasn't, simply true. Bruce made no judgments on those who chose the mundane life. Not anymore, at least. Tim Drake had escaped the way Bruce, Barbara, Dick, and no matter his fears, the way Terry never would.

Or maybe he same himself not in Drake, but in the unnamed one, the one never mentioned, only rumored. Terry chased that rabbit, down into the holes of the Undercloud where superhero conspiracies flourished and a few truths bubbled in the sludge of irrationality and lies. He pursued it more doggedly than Bruce had expected. Did he wonder why Bruce had said “No more” after Tim, but not after this poor boy? All Terry found was stale gossip. No one remembered that Robin's name anymore.

Bruce had his costume stored in a alcove of the cave so secret, even Barbara didn't know it was there.

Then Dick, the graduated hero. Terry *must* relate to him, to his anger and his ability both. What must he think of the boy wonder who became a man, and the man who now rejected his past with none of Tim's passivity but fervid hatred? Tim and Bruce, they had a nice conversation over tea last week. That sounded so neutral, comparatively, but it was . . . it was genuinely good to see Tim, to think of himself as a younger man again and catch up, sipping chamomile of the exact type and temperature as Alfred would have made them. Bruce could not, with all his morbid imagination, ever concoct a scenario wherein Dick and he shared such a sentimental moment. (Sentiment. What he called sentiment, others called kindness.) Nightwing was lost with Dick's eye and his relationship to Barbara, and he blamed Bruce for all of that.

Terry, would you see your future in the costume he was, or the rage he became?

Bruce closed his eyes, his body so tired that even his leg ceased to ache, and only exhaustion permeated him. It was a nice change from the agony of the elderly. He could sit here in the dark behind his lids for hours, however, and he knew sleep wouldn't join him. Ace was dead to the world. The dog snored, when he was especially bushed. 

Dick. Barbara. Tim. Jason. Terry.

“Let this one be different.” Bruce whispered, and turned off his screen.


End file.
